McAfee Snags Preventsys, Releases Falcon

With Falcon, McAfee products will all be on a subscription-fee basis.

McAfee has announced four new security service suites as part of the Falcon family of products, which provides a more user-friendly interface to McAfee's product line, plus a subscription model.

At the same time, the company snapped up an intrusion prevention and compliance testing firm for its business customers. The company picked up Preventsys, a developer of security risk management and automated security compliance reporting, for a price tag that a McAfee (Quote, Chart) spokesperson described as a "single-digit millions."

Preventsys specializes in security risk management for large companies that needs to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of its customers. Its flagship product is Security Risk Manager, which comes with templates for checking compliance with SOX, HIPAA, GLBA, FISMA, CIS, NSA, NIST, and other regulations.. Customers can also develop their own custom compliance testing templates.

"With Preventsys technology, we can help our customers satisfy regulatory requirements for automated compliance reporting, while leveraging existing McAfee technologies such as McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator and Foundstone," said Ken Gonzalez, vice president of corporate development at McAfee.

A McAfee spokesperson confirmed that Security Risk Manager would be integrated into multiple McAfee products, with emphasis on integrating it into McAfee's Foundstone and ePolicy Enforcer products.

McAfee declined to say how many people work for Preventsys and is still working on integrating the company into the McAfee structure, but said the firm is absorbing the Preventsys staff and does not expect to have any redundancy. The company also has not disclosed what role Patrick Harr, chief executive officer for Preventsys, will take.